One day before my freshman year, I was suddenly struck by the notion that I was going to almost complete freedom for the first time in my life once I stated at Washington and Lee. While I still had some obligations, such as class and swim practice, I could stay out as late as I wanted, eat whatever I felt like, or even just up and leave Lexington without anyone to tell me otherwise. *Disclaimer to all reading- I was and have been a very good student and never felt the need to really test the limits of my freedom, but knowing I could has always excited me!
For the first three years of my college experience, I never thought that I could ever get or want more freedom than what Washington and Lee already gave me. Clearly I was wrong. Today, as my classmates and I were reflecting on our experience in Copenhagen so far, we came to realize that the freedom we have here is so much more than we ever expected- it is almost literally “freedom on steroids.”
While we work each day on our individual projects, our two professors are back on campus teaching another class. That means that we have no adults here to structure our days. We get to make our own work schedules, set our own hours and locations, and travel around the city or even the country as much as we want. Our only real task is to finish our projects by the deadline.
To almost any other college student, this sounds unreal. How can you possibly be trusted to do your work? Why don’t you just leave it for the last minute and go travel for four weeks? How is that even allowed?
My honest answer to all of these questions is that Washington and Lee and its honor system, have been preparing me for this moment since I first set foot on campus. While our class is all under the impression that we want to have fun this trip, our first and foremost goal is to produce the best projects we possible can.
Yes, we can travel as much as we want, but both groups decided on their own (with some advice from our professors) to only take this upcoming weekend off. My group decided to work every week day we are here, and even some weekends, starting at 9:30 a.m. and ending whenever we accomplish our tasks for the day.
Other students at other schools in the same situation might abuse this freedom, but my class seems to view this as the ultimate challenge. We get to prove to everyone that yes, you can leave a group of 8 unchaperoned students in a foreign county for four weeks and have them create and produce amazing projects by the end of it. Washington and Lee has taught us what we have to do to get a task done, so much so that we even when given the gift of freedom on steroids, we still chose to work until the job is done.
Music to my ears, but I’m not sure that W&L deserves all of the credit on this front. At the risk of sounding cliche, your work ethic – or more accurately, the trajectory of your evolving work ethic – was established before you hit campus as a first year.
That noted, the freedom that you describe and the responsibilities/risks that accompany it are part of what we had in mind when we created the class a few years ago. It’s scary from our perspective each time we run it, as our reputations are on the line . . . and we have far less control over the outcome than you and your classmates. Our faith in our students has, however, been validated time and time again.